Stephanie Noel, a.k.a Cheffanie, is the creator of the Comox Valley’s Backyard Table, a multi-faceted gastronomic experience that sees food and nature deeply intertwined. She counts catering, pop-ups and now, “meals at home,” as her dynamic business.
The relationships she gains through food inspires her experiential culinary endeavours—a parallel to the “gourmet family feasts and generosity found in sharing a meal” that she remembers from her Quebec childhood and the “camaraderie of the kitchen” that sparked her career. It was a desire to forge deep connections with clientele that guided her from working at illustrious spots like Hawksworth restaurant in Vancouver for almost five years (including a “career highlight” of co-creating the Hawksworth cookbook), Tofino’s Long Beach Lodge Resort and Michelin-starred restaurants in France, to the quieter, community-orientated Comox Valley.
After numerous visits to friends in the area, she soon envisioned setting down roots amidst the abundance of farms, seafood and natural spaces to explore. But it took the pandemic, which shut down her ongoing work with Hawksworth for Air Canada and her events catering, to land permanently. Stephanie’s openness to novelty and change helped her land a commercial kitchen—the backbone of her business—as well as a garden to grow her own produce.
While she had proven her abilities in the kitchen, “as the chef, you would never interact with guests,” she shares. “At most, a server might relay a compliment.” Seasonal work at heli-ski and fishing lodges gave her a taste of an alternative: opportunities that took her to stunning outdoor locations (“I feel so blessed; so fun!”) that also allowed her to interact one-on-one with guests.
Captivated by the landscape of Haida Gwaii during a fishing lodge stint, she stayed on for five weeks of mushroom picking—the early signals that would lead to her creating Backyard Table, an opportunity to bring people a little bit closer to the real food source, finding joy in eating in outdoor locations close to where some of the ingredients were gathered. This food philosophy rooted in place also means her menus are guided by nature’s bounty and seasonal goods. “I find morels in spring, chanterelles in autumn. The outdoors is a huge inspiration; I’ll go for a walk and maybe spot some sea asparagus and think, what can I make with that? Just this week I’ve gathered wild roses to make syrup.”
When it’s not from the forest or her garden, it’s “as local as possible,” from the Valley’s farmers’ markets and local suppliers like Gunter Bros for meats and Natural Pastures for cheese. “I use a lot of seafood too, building relationships with local fishermen for Dungeness crab, spot prawns, albacore tuna. We’re a small business, just two right now, so I’m mainly buying things myself—there’s no huge deliveries in our production.”
Meals @ Home
Meals @ Home is an “improvement on other meal kits”—more sustainable, and easier for purchasers to cook. They are vacuum sealed, with some solely needing a pot of hot water, making them perfect meals for camping—or really, anywhere. “Imagine pausing on the mountain while snowboarding for lunch,” she says. “An egg sandwich is pulled out next to you, but you pull out a butter chicken curry and they ask, ‘where did you get that!’”
Aside from the season, Stephanie finds guidance in using up portions of ingredients she already has to minimize waste. The menu changes weekly—experimental, exciting, and perhaps her favourite part of being a chef. Add to that years spent cultivating an exceptional intuition and innovative flair when it comes to flavours and new dishes during her time as Hawksworth’s development chef, and Meals @ Home becomes an expertly balanced mix of elevated favourites and fresh ideas in your home. International cuisines also influence her creations, so she’s offered everything from sushi and pizza (she has an oven in her garden) to fish curries, Asian salads and an array of bowls.
She has come to know folks who show up every week, and she has found joy in inspiring people to think about food in new ways. “Some say they were never much of a cook, or wouldn’t have tried a certain dish, or found it hard cooking for one.” Stephanie cares, and so does her community—her business has primarily gained momentum from word-of-mouth referrals.
Meals @ Home will be the main focus through fall and winter, helping people continue to eat delicious, intentional meals through the quieter seasons. But stay tuned: Stephanie is filled with a curiosity that means her offerings are constantly evolving.
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